Little more than a week ago, Maxi went to Gaga for the weekend. In the airport, we saw this:
“Does that plane have a target so the enemies know where to shoot?”
And Max asked: “Does that plane have a target so the enemies know where to shoot?”
He got his braces off 1 week ago today:
Braces removed on Dec 17, 2019
Karolina will be getting a gold crown soon.
Max: “Can I have your gold tooth when you die??”
And then later, “was there ever a Blodgett who was wealthy?”
Is Leonardo Da Vinci (he can’t pronounce it but we understand) more famous than Meow Wolf?
Did he make the woman who everyone steals in France?
Today I went to Thanksgiving lunch at Havern School with Max. Yesterday he wore his zoot-suit pajama onesy. It’s been a fun week for him.
He made a stuffy in art class; it was on the lunch table. We say with Jackson and his father, and Max’s reading teacher whose name I do not remember. They just finished reading Lemonade Wars with Max, Jackson, and Liam. They are starting the sequel.
We’re moving. There is stuff all over the floor of my office.
On the floor are some framed photos of my old family. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, even older ancestors.
There’s a wonderful hand-colored photo of my mother as a baby. It must be from 1943 or 1944.
Elliot pointed at it. At first, I thought he was pointing to his baby door jumper:
He loves to swing in that, and it was on the floor near the framed photo. He sometimes points at it as a way to ask me to mount it in the door and swing him. But as I went to pick it up, he shook his head.
So I picked up the photo of my mother thinking he couldn’t possibly want that… but he did. He took it from me and kissed the baby in the photo. He brought it to his lips and kissed. He only learned to kiss a couple of months ago. He kissed his grandmother. I was crying inside and about to cry outside.
Then I decided to swing him on the baby swing after all. He loved it as usual.
After a little while, I took him out and Karolina walked by. I told her about the kiss. I was holding Elliot in my arms this time, and bent down to get the photo once more. Elliot took it close to him and kissed my mother again. Karolina BEAMED while I cried.
I received this yesterday from a man in Hamburg:
Hi Eric, I am using FoxyProxy every day and I think this payment is overdue. Would you please send me a proper commercial invoice to nils. goroll@uplex. de ? Thank you, Nils
Hello Nils,
Going to Cincinnati with Max. We’re going to a Schaier wedding.
On the way, in the car:
Max: you know those 10 laws?
Me: (Remembering what he is currently learning in school): you mean the Bill of Rights?
Max: “Yeah, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of clothing, and the others?”
I asked Max what it was like before Freedom of Clothing. “You have to wear wigs and dress like the old times (he means men in 1700s England). Either that or like the guys in Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Me: “So the women who have to wear Burka… Clothes over their whole body and head and face… Do they have Freedom of Clothing?”
Max: “No”
Max is studying the safety instructions and he says he’s loves reading them (they are all pictures). He is trying to buckle my seat belt. Now he’s watching the safety video and checking his seat belt is tight.
Today we closed on the sale of the house at 1562 Red Draw in Cordilllera. It was an awful experience all the way through, especially on the final day.
I’ll only mention a couple of events that happened today, but there were many other complications throughout the last 30+ days to reach closing.
1. We unfortunately agreed to patch and paint holes. Karolina accidentally used the wrong paint color in two rooms (upstairs tv room, upstairs bed room), and the paint in the dining room also didn’t match exactly (as mentioned in the contract, they should be exact) because the walls had faded while the paint in can did not.
We initially agreed to $250 credit for there 3 rooms. Then the buyer’s broker walked through the house Sunday night and said every room had this problem.
Brooke, our realtor, said she’d go to the house in the morning to see, and she would fix the spots herself with matched paint from Home Depot is necessary.
She got to the house 10:00 on Monday (closing at 11:30) and said the problem was too serious for her to fix.
We got her mother, Pam, on the phone, who was in Paris on vacation. They both put on the pressure to increase our $250 credit.
“You need to close”, said Pam.
I threw out $500, and Pam didn’t think that was enough. She wanted me to justify the number and was pushing for more but would not suggest an amount.
Meanwhile, Brooke had texted $500 to the buyer’s broker. During this discussion with Pam, he replied that the sellers would accept $500. Yay, right?
Karolina insisted she would not sign the closing documents until this paint agreement was signed by the buyers.
“YOU NEED TO CLOSE”, said Pam.
We agreed to give them $500 towards it in a signed document not part of the formal closing documents. Including it in the closing documents would force the whole deal to be reviewed by the buyer’s lender again, forcing a 3+ day delay… Then we would not be able to buy 715 Mueller Drive in Highlands Ranch.
So we signed the paint agreement (so sign the buyers), closing documents and thought everything was done…
2. I get a call from the title company around 2:30 that the buyer’s lender wants me and Karolina to sign a document that says something like, “we know of no other money changing hands outside of the closing documents.” Without it, they wouldnt give he funds to the buyers.
Well, clearly this statement wasn’t true. Penalty for lying? Fine and/or prison.
But our realtor, Brooke, insisted this $500 was another transaction and not part of the closing. I wasn’t comfortable with that. The document had the same date and even the address on it.
I could not reach Karolina.
I sent the documents to our realtor for 715 Mueller Drive, Adrian Dedering, to get his opinion. He immediately said he would not sign, which reinforced my feelings.
I told Brooke again that I don’t want to sign it
“YOU NEED TO CLOSE. YOU WILL BE IN BREECH OF YOUR OBLIGATIONS. YOU WILL LOSE THE ESCROW MONEY” and an insinuation that I’d have to pay the realty company there commission, anyway.
She called me back with John Slifer on the phone, while I conference Adrian for support (Slifer did not like that and was pushing to understand why Adrian was on the call).
John asked some questions about the deal. I explained I didn’t feel comfortable signing. I didn’t want to go to jail over the this. Brooke didn’t speak.
At this point it was 3:30. We had 90 minutes to resolve this or the house would not be sold (title company closed at 5:00 PM).
“Will you sign the lenders document if we can get the buyers to void the agreement?”
“Absolutely”, I said. “Be creative.”
He said he’d call me back. When he did, Brooke did not speak again.
“Brooke will pay the buyers $500 as a closing gift. You don’t pay anything. We don’t want any paper trail. The $500 agreement you had with the buyers won’t voided, but it won’t be executed, either. When all this is over, maybe you could send Brooke a nice thank you gift.”
Whew. But I still knew of another deal outside the closing document regarding the transaction, even if want anything we were paying. I still didn’t really want to sign the lenders document.
I called the title company, about to say that I was resady to sign. Before I could, the title agent said the lender agreed to give the money even without that signed document: they had provided it so last-minute, that they must have felt like they screwed up (we should have been given the document earlier).
I said we’d sign it and send it tomorrow because we didn’t have a scanner. Maybe even take photos instead… I couldn’t reach my wife, anyway, to get her signature.
We’re not signing that… Ever.
Karolina made a chicken pot pie in celebration. She carved the words, “FUCK THEM” into the crust.
Elliot LOVES to chase me and Max with the lobster gloves. He also does this with a shark glove (then I call him shark baby).
The other day, ISIS’s leader and founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—the world’s most wanted man, was killed US forces.
Max and I talked about it in the morning, while I drove him to Havern.
In the evening, we watched a Trump’s press Max conference about it.
Max can’t say the Bahgdadi right, or he doesn’t hear it correctly. So he calls him Big Daddy.
Max and I are sleeping in the master bedroom, just the two of us. We played a lot of Sim City 4. This was the first time Max played without destroying his city. “But I did something else bad. I took out huge loans”.
I did not even know you could take out loans in this game, and I’ve been playing for years.
After he bought a Mayor’s Mansion and limosine, he drove around the city throwing money out of the car. Then he bough a White House with his 200 million dollar loan, while reducing the amount of money spent on roads (so they roads had lots of pot holes after a time).
I texted this to Whitney, who he had just spent the weekend with — first time seeing baby Johannes! And Whitney replied:
We also watched the 13-minute documentary about the world’s most dangerous amusement park, Action Park in New Jersey, which I went to every summer as a boy.
We are having a blast together but did not make it to the swimming pool as planned 🙁
Dinner at Marco’s Pizza!
Elliot loves helping and copying.If Karolina is vacuuming, he wants to vacuum.
If I am turning a screwdriver to replace dimmer switches in Cordillera, Elliot wants to turn the screwdriver.
If we’re walking Chinle, he wants to hold the leash.
Stirring the soup? He wants to stir.
And on and on. So many things.
Sometimes he repeats something we did, but much later. Tonight he took a bath. He opened up the bath-book that my sister got him when he was born. He pointed at the pictures and imitated reading, just as we did with the same book so many times.
More than an this, Elliot LOVES throwing stones and sticks and pinecones into the ponds and streams at the Cordillera house.
He loves being outdoors with Taylor the baby sitter.
This was the last weekend we will sleep in Cordillera (actually we slwpt there the next weekend but without Max). We’ll spend one or two more there but without beds, I’m not sure where or how we’ll sleep. Max will only be there one more weekend.
Here are some memories of it:
5. Watching Weird Al’s UHF movie with Max for the first time (in bed together on a Saturday night, my favorite).
6. Shopping at Home Depot. Max pushing Elliot around in a race car / shopping cart. They spent probably an hour in the Halloween section while we explored flooring options for the new house.
7. Repairing the garage light with a 6 dollar glue gun; the electrician wants 175.
8. Elliot wearing Max’s cowboy hat and strumming the 6-string guitar, just like a cowboy.
9. Max reminded me of something he asked about this past Summer. We were watching Stranger Things Season 3, which takes place in the 1980s:
Max: “Why is that woman wearing pink stuff on her eyes?
(A woman was wearing eye shadow).
I explained it and told him it’s not in style anymore. Tonight, he said that Mrs. Welch at school (5th grade) wears that “strange eye paint” and will it come back in style someday?
It is the 10th anniversary of Annoying Orange. Max, Elliot, and I watched his special video in bed yesterday morning. It was Elliot’s first time, which means we probably haven’t watched him in 18 months or more. Strange.
Karolina was not pleased. She said Elliot should be older before he sees that silliness. I said, “will it take away 10% of his brain like Max’s friend’s parents say about Sponge Bob?”
She was not pleased.
I was reminded of Annoying Orange because Mara texted me a photo of an Annoying Orange pen that Reid had purchased. Reid says Annoying Orange reminds him of me.
Mark DeCheser <mark@decheserstudios.com>
Mon, Sep 30, 3:24 PM (15 hours ago)
to Eric
Jailbreak:
Teams are split 50/50. Escapees go hide. “Cops” count to 60 or something like that.
“Cops” try to catch prisoners who have to go to jail until they are either freed or all prisoners are caught. The only way to free a prisoner (or multiple prisoners) is for an uncaught prisoner to touch the jail cell without getting caught. You play a round until everyone gets caught or you can’t catch everyone (this part is fuzzy).
Once one or two prisoners get caught, one jailer camps the jail to prevent jail breakers.
Bloody Murder:
One murderer goes and hides in the woods. All the “victims” or whatever you want to call the non murderer go out to find the murderer. The first person to find the murderer shrieks BLOODY MURDER LIKE FUCKING FRANTIC_NEUMAN and everyone hauls ass back to home base. If the murderer catches anyone, the caught victim joins the murderer for the next round. This continues round after round until either there’s one victim left standing or everyone is caught. Also fuzzy here.
Yours,
One Traveller of Willowdale
Mia & Meran have a crush on Max and Jackson. They told Max. And Jackson. But they told Zayde they like Max a little more. Jackson does not seem to care very much. Max feels weird, happy.
Max: “I never had this experience before”
He keeps saying that.
Zayde
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